breast. Even to my
nostrils there was wafted the fragrance of attar of roses, and with the
exhalations of perfume came a gentle sigh of timidity almost at my very
ear.

"I was moistening my parched lips with my tongue, when I awoke from my
momentary trance. The zemindar's eyes were blazing down at me.

"'Villain, this ring is yours!' he cried, struggling to his feet.

"'Not mine, my lord,' I protested, flinging myself at full length before
him.

"But at that very moment there rang forth the sharp tattoo of a horse's
hoofs on the paved courtyard without, followed by the sharp challenge of
a sentry, the bang of a matchlock, and then a very babel of excited
yelling.

"Every one in the audience hall swept outside, even the zemindar, his
dignity all forgotten. Left alone, with swift consciousness of the
suspicion that had fastened itself upon me, and of my powerlessness to
deny connivance with the escape of my friend, I gathered myself up and
fled by a side passage to a ghat on the river. Here I had a boat
prepared for just the emergency that had happened, and because of this
happy foresight I am enabled to-day, after more than two score of years,
to tell the tale."

* * * * *

"And the zemindar?" asked the Afghan soldier.

"Dead long since."

"The hollow marble column?" pressed the interlocutor.

"Its secret remained unrevealed," replied the tax-collector. "Trusty
friends told me later that the flight of Abdul on a fiery stallion, with
a female figure clinging to him on the saddle behind, ever remained a
mystery. So the youth had had the presence of mind to close the sliding
panels above and below."

"He escaped? He lived?" queried the Rajput.

"Assuredly," came the quiet reply. "I have never seen nor heard from
Abdul from that day to this. But as destiny had provided, long years
before the actual event, a means for the accomplishment of his
happiness, I have ever rested content in the belief that all was well
with him--that all is well with him even yet perhaps--with him and his
beloved in the valley of far-away Bokhara."

"I should like to find that hollow column," muttered the Afghan.

"As I have said, the column was contrived for love and not for rapine,
my friend. Should the white stone from Coromandel that can be cunningly
wrought into marble ever cross your fate, be on your guard lest the omen
mean, not the gaining of a fortune, but the making of a tomb."

The Afghan